'You brute,' he said, in a voice that tottered, 'look behind you!'

'Wha's that?' cried Davis, bounding in the boat and upsetting the
champagne.

'You lost the Sea Ranger because you were a drunken sot,' said Herrick.
'Now you're going to lose the Farallone. You're going to drown here the
same way as you drowned others, and be damned. And your daughter shall
walk the streets, and your sons be thieves like their father.'

For the moment, the words struck the captain white and foolish. 'My
God!' he cried, looking at Herrick as upon a ghost; 'my God, Herrick!'

'Look behind you, then!' reiterated the assailant.

The wretched man, already partly sobered, did as he was told, and in the
same breath of time leaped to his feet. 'Down staysail!' he trumpeted.
The hands were thrilling for the order, and the great sail came with
a run, and fell half overboard among the racing foam. 'Jib
topsail-halyards! Let the stays'l be,' he said again.

But before it was well uttered, the squall shouted aloud and fell, in
a solid mass of wind and rain commingled, on the Farallone; and she
stooped under the blow, and lay like a thing dead. From the mind of
Herrick reason fled; he clung in the weather rigging, exulting; he was
done with life, and he gloried in the release; he gloried in the wild
noises of the wind and the choking onslaught of the rain; he gloried to
die so, and now, amid this coil of the elements. And meanwhile, in the
waist up to his knees in water--so low the schooner lay--the captain
was hacking at the foresheet with a pocket knife. It was a question of
seconds, for the Farallone drank deep of the encroaching seas. But the
hand of the captain had the advance; the foresail boom tore apart the
last strands of the sheet and crashed to leeward; the Farallone leaped
up into the wind and righted; and the peak and throat halyards, which
had long been let go, began to run at the same instant.

For some ten minutes more she careered under the impulse of the squall;
but the captain was now master of himself and of his ship, and all
danger at an end. And then, sudden as a trick change upon the stage, the
squall blew by, the wind dropped into light airs, the sun beamed forth
again upon the tattered schooner; and the captain, having secured the
foresail boom and set a couple of hands to the pump, walked aft, sober,
a little pale, and with the sodden end of a cigar still stuck between
his teeth even as the squall had found it. Herrick followed him; he
could scarce recall the violence of his late emotions, but he felt
there was a scene to go through, and he was anxious and even eager to go
through with it.

The captain, turning at the house end, met him face to face, and averted
his eyes. 'We've lost the two tops'ls and the stays'l,' he gabbled.
'Good business, we didn't lose any sticks. I guess you think we're all
the better without the kites.'

'That's not what I'm thinking,' said Herrick, in a voice strangely
quiet, that yet echoed confusion in the captain's mind.

'I know that,' he cried, holding up his hand. 'I know what you're
thinking. No use to say it now. I'm sober.'

'I have to say it, though,' returned Herrick.

'Hold on, Herrick; you've said enough,' said Davis. 'You've said what I
would take from no man breathing but yourself; only I know it's true.'

'I have to tell you, Captain Brown,' pursued Herrick, 'that I resign my
position as mate. You can put me in irons or shoot me, as you please; I
will make no resistance--only, I decline in any way to help or to obey
you; and I suggest you should put Mr Huish in my place. He will make a
worthy first officer to your captain, sir.' He smiled, bowed, and turned
to walk forward.

'Where are you going, Herrick?' cried the captain, detaining him by the
shoulder.

'To berth forward with the men, sir,' replied Herrick, with the same
hateful smile. 'I've been long enough aft here with you--gentlemen.

'You're wrong there,' said Davis. 'Don't you be too quick with me; there
ain't nothing wrong but the drink--it's the old story, man! Let me get
sober once, and then you'll see,' he pleaded.

'Excuse me, I desire to see no more of you,' said Herrick.

The captain groaned aloud. 'You know what you said about my children?'
he broke out.

'By rote. In case you wish me to say it you again?' asked Herrick.

'Don't!' cried the captain, clapping his hands to his ears. 'Don't make
me kill a man I care for! Herrick, if you see me put glass to my lips
again till we're ashore, I give you leave to put bullet through me;
I beg you to do it! You're the only man aboard whose carcase is worth
losing; do you think I don't know that? do you think I ever went back on
you? I always knew you were in the right of it--drunk or sober, I knew
that. What do you want?--an oath? Man, you're clever enough to see that
this is sure-enough earnest.'

'Do you mean there shall be no more drinking?' asked Herrick, 'neither
by you nor Huish? that you won't go on stealing my profits and drinking
my champagne that I gave my honour for? and that you'll attend to your
duties, and stand watch and watch, and bear your proper share of the
ship's work, instead of leaving it all on the shoulders of a landsman,
and making yourself the butt and scoff of native seamen? Is that what
you mean? If it is, be so good as to say it categorically.'

'You put these things in a way hard for a gentleman to swallow,' said
the captain. 'You wouldn't have me say I was ashamed of myself? Trust me
this once; I'll do the square thing, and there's my hand on it.'

'Well, I'll try it once,' said Herrick. 'Fail me again...'

'No more now!' interrupted Davis. 'No more, old man! Enough said. You've
a riling tongue when your back's up, Herrick. Just be glad we're friends
again, the same as what I am; and go tender on the raws; I'll see as you
don't repent it. We've been mighty near death this day--don't say whose
fault it was!--pretty near hell, too, I guess. We're in a mighty bad
line of life, us two, and ought to go easy with each other.'

He was maundering; yet it seemed as if he were maundering with some
design, beating about the bush of some communication that he feared to
make, or perhaps only talking against time in terror of what Herrick
might say next. But Herrick had now spat his venom; his was a kindly
nature, and, content with his triumph, he had now begun to pity. With
a few soothing words, he sought to conclude the interview, and proposed
that they should change their clothes.

'Not right yet,' said Davis. 'There's another thing I want to tell you
first. You know what you said about my children? I want to tell you why
it hit me so hard; I kind of think you'll feel bad about it too. It's
about my little Adar. You hadn't ought to have quite said that--but of
course I know you didn't know. She--she's dead, you see.'

'Why, Davis!' cried Herrick. 'You've told me a dozen times she was
alive! Clear your head, man! This must be the drink.'

'No, SIR,' said Davis. 'She's dead. Died of a bowel complaint. That was
when I was away in the brig Oregon. She lies in Portland, Maine. "Adar,
only daughter of Captain John Davis and Mariar his wife, aged five."
I had a doll for her on board. I never took the paper off'n that doll,
Herrick; it went down the way it was with the Sea Ranger, that day I was
damned.'

The Captain's eyes were fixed on the horizon, he talked with an
extraordinary softness but a complete composure; and Herrick looked upon
him with something that was almost terror.

'Don't think I'm crazy neither,' resumed Davis. 'I've all the cold sense
that I know what to do with. But I guess a man that's unhappy's like a
child; and this is a kind of a child's game of mine. I never could act
up to the plain-cut truth, you see; so I pretend. And I warn you square;
as soon as we're through with this talk, I'll start in again with
the pretending. Only, you see, she can't walk no streets,' added the
captain, 'couldn't even make out to live and get that doll!'

Herrick laid a tremulous hand upon the captain's shoulder.

'Don't do that,' cried Davis, recoiling from the touch. 'Can't you see
I'm all broken up the way it is? Come along, then; come along, old
man; you can put your trust in me right through; come along and get dry
clothes.'

They entered the cabin, and there was Huish on his knees prising open a
case of champagne.

''Vast, there!' cried the captain. 'No more of that. No more drinking on
this ship.'

'Turned teetotal, 'ave you?' inquired Hu'sh. 'I'm agreeable. About time,
eh? Bloomin' nearly lost another ship, I fancy.' He took out a bottle
and began calmly to burst the wire with the spike of a corkscrew.

'Do you hear me speak?' cried Davis.

'I suppose I do. You speak loud enough,' said Huish. 'The trouble is
that I don't care.'

Herrick plucked the captain's sleeve. 'Let him free now,' he said.
'We've had all we want this morning.'

'Let him have it then,' said the captain. 'It's his last.'

By this time the wire was open, the string was cut, the head of glided
paper was torn away; and Huish waited, mug in hand, expecting the usual
explosion. It did not follow. He eased the cork with his thumb; still
there was no result. At last he took the screw and drew it. It came out
very easy and with scarce a sound.

''Illo!'said Huish. ''Ere's a bad bottle.'

He poured some of the wine into the mug; it was colourless and still. He
smelt and tasted it.

'W'y, wot's this?' he said. 'It's water!'

If the voice of trumpets had suddenly sounded about the ship in the
midst of the sea, the three men in the house could scarcely have been
more stunned than by this incident. The mug passed round; each sipped,
each smelt of it; each stared at the bottle in its glory of gold paper
as Crusoe may have stared at the footprint; and their minds were swift
to fix upon a common apprehension. The difference between a bottle of
champagne and a bottle of water is not great; between a shipload of one
or the other lay the whole scale from riches to ruin.

A second bottle was broached. There were two cases standing ready in a
stateroom; these two were brought out, broken open, and tested. Still
with the same result: the contents were still colourless and tasteless,
and dead as the rain in a beached fishing-boat.

'Crikey!' said Huish.

'Here, let's sample the hold!' said the captain, mopping his brow with
a back-handed sweep; and the three stalked out of the house, grim and
heavy-footed.

All hands were turned out; two Kanakas were sent below, another
stationed at a purchase; and Davis, axe in hand, took his place beside
the coamings.

'Are you going to let the men know?' whispered Herrick.

'Damn the men!' said Davis. 'It's beyond that. We've got to know
ourselves.'

Three cases were sent on deck and sampled in turn; from each bottle,
as the captain smashed it with the axe, the champagne ran bubbling and
creaming.

'Go deeper, can't you?' cried Davis to the Kanakas in the hold.

The command gave the signal for a disastrous change. Case after case
came up, bottle after bottle was burst and bled mere water. Deeper
yet, and they came upon a layer where there was scarcely so much as
the intention to deceive; where the cases were no longer branded, the
bottles no longer wired or papered, where the fraud was manifest and
stared them in the face.

'Here's about enough of this foolery!' said Davis. 'Stow back the cases
in the hold, Uncle, and get the broken crockery overboard. Come with
me,' he added to his co-adventurers, and led the way back into the
cabin.



Chapter 6. THE PARTNERS

Each took a side of the fixed table; it was the first time they had sat
down at it together; but now all sense of incongruity, all memory of
differences, was quite swept away by the presence of the common ruin.

'Gentlemen,' said the captain, after a pause, and with very much the air
of a chairman opening a board-meeting, 'we're sold.'

Huish broke out in laughter. 'Well, if this ain't the 'ighest old rig!'
he cried. 'And Dyvis, 'ere, who thought he had got up so bloomin' early
in the mornin'! We've stolen a cargo of spring water! Oh, my crikey!'
and he squirmed with mirth.

The captain managed to screw out a phantom smile.

'Here's Old Man Destiny again,' said he to Herrick, 'but this time I
guess he's kicked the door right in.'

Herrick only shook his head.

'O Lord, it's rich!' laughed Huish. 'It would really be a scrumptious
lark if it 'ad 'appened to somebody else! And wot are we to do next? Oh,
my eye! with this bloomin' schooner, too?'

'That's the trouble,' said Davis. 'There's only one thing certain: it's
no use carting this old glass and ballast to Peru. No, SIR, we're in a
hole.'

'O my, and the merchand' cried Huish; 'the man that made this shipment!
He'll get the news by the mail brigantine; and he'll think of course
we're making straight for Sydney.'

'Yes, he'll be a sick merchant,' said the captain. 'One thing: this
explains the Kanaka crew. If you're going to lose a ship, I would ask
no better myself than a Kanaka crew. But there's one thing it don't
explain; it don't explain why she came down Tahiti ways.'

'Wy, to lose her, you byby!' said Huish.

'A lot you know,' said the captain. 'Nobody wants to lose a schooner;
they want to lose her ON HER COURSE, you skeericks! You seem to think
underwriters haven't got enough sense to come in out of the rain.'

'Well,' said Herrick, 'I can tell you (I am afraid) why she came so
far to the eastward. I had it of Uncle Ned. It seems these two unhappy
devils, Wiseman and Wishart, were drunk on the champagne from the
beginning--and died drunk at the end.'

The captain looked on the table.

'They lay in their two bunks, or sat here in this damned house,' he
pursued, with rising agitation, 'filling their skins with the accursed
stuff, till sickness took them. As they sickened and the fever rose,
they drank the more. They lay here howling and groaning, drunk and
dying, all in one. They didn't know where they were, they didn't care.
They didn't even take the sun, it seems.'

'Not take the sun?' cried the captain, looking up. 'Sacred Billy! what a
crowd!'

'Well, it don't matter to Joe!' said Huish. 'Wot are Wiseman and the
t'other buffer to us?'

'A good deal, too,' says the captain. 'We're their heirs, I guess.'

'It is a great inheritance,' said Herrick.

'Well, I don't know about that,' returned Davis. 'Appears to me as if it
might be worse. 'Tain't worth what the cargo would have been of course,
at least not money down. But I'll tell you what it appears to figure up
to. Appears to me as if it amounted to about the bottom dollar of the
man in 'Frisco.'

''Old on,' said Huish. 'Give a fellow time; 'ow's this, umpire?'

'Well, my sons,' pursued the captain, who seemed to have recovered his
assurance, 'Wiseman and Wishart were to be paid for casting away this
old schooner and its cargo. We're going to cast away the schooner right
enough; and I'll make it my private business to see that we get paid.
What were W. and W. to get? That's more'n I can tell. But W. and W. went
into this business themselves, they were on the crook. Now WE'RE on
the square, we only stumbled into it; and that merchant has just got to
squeal, and I'm the man to see that he squeals good. No, sir! there's
some stuffing to this Farallone racket after all.'

'Go it, cap!' cried Huish. 'Yoicks! Forrard! 'Old 'ard! There's your
style for the money! Blow me if I don't prefer this to the hother.'

'I do not understand,' said Herrick. 'I have to ask you to excuse me; I
do not understand.'

'Well now, see here, Herrick,' said Davis, 'I'm going to have a word
with you anyway upon a different matter, and it's good that Huish should
hear it too. We're done with this boozing business, and we ask your
pardon for it right here and now. We have to thank you for all you did
for us while we were making hogs of ourselves; you'll find me turn-to
all right in future; and as for the wine, which I grant we stole from
you, I'll take stock and see you paid for it. That's good enough, I
believe. But what I want to point out to you is this. The old game was
a risky game. The new game's as safe as running a Vienna Bakery. We just
put this Farallone before the wind, and run till we're well to looard
of our port of departure and reasonably well up with some other place,
where they have an American Consul. Down goes the Farallone, and
good-bye to her! A day or so in the boat; the consul packs us home,
at Uncle Sam's expense, to 'Frisco; and if that merchant don't put the
dollars down, you come to me!'

'But I thought,' began Herrick; and then broke out; 'oh, let's get on to
Peru!'

'Well, if you're going to Peru for your health, I won't say no!'
replied the captain. 'But for what other blame' shadow of a reason you
should want to go there, gets me clear. We don't want to go there with
this cargo; I don't know as old bottles is a lively article anywheres;
leastways, I'll go my bottom cent, it ain't Peru. It was always a doubt
if we could sell the schooner; I never rightly hoped to, and now I'm
sure she ain't worth a hill of beans; what's wrong with her, I don't
know; I only know it's something, or she wouldn't be here with this
truck in her inside. Then again, if we lose her, and land in Peru, where
are we? We can't declare the loss, or how did we get to Peru? In that
case the merchant can't touch the insurance; most likely he'll go bust;
and don't you think you see the three of us on the beach of Callao?'

'There's no extradition there,' said Herrick.

'Well, my son, and we want to be extraded,' said the captain.

'What's our point? We want to have a consul extrade us as far as San
Francisco and that merchant's office door. My idea is that Samoa would
be found an eligible business centre. It's dead before the wind; the
States have a consul there, and 'Frisco steamers call, so's we could
skip right back and interview the merchant.'

'Samoa?' said Herrick. 'It will take us for ever to get there.'

'Oh, with a fair wind!' said the captain.

'No trouble about the log, eh?' asked Huish.

'No, SIR,' said Davis. 'Light airs and baffling winds. Squalls and
calms. D. R.: five miles. No obs. Pumps attended. And fill in the
barometer and thermometer off of last year's trip.' 'Never saw such a
voyage,' says you to the consul. 'Thought I was going to run short...'
He stopped in mid career. 'Say,' he began again, and once more stopped.
'Beg your pardon, Herrick,' he added with undisguised humility, 'but did
you keep the run of the stores?'

'Had I been told to do so, it should have been done, as the rest was
done, to the best of my little ability,' said Herrick. 'As it was, the
cook helped himself to what he pleased.'

Davis looked at the table.

'I drew it rather fine, you see,' he said at last. 'The great thing was
to clear right out of Papeete before the consul could think better of
it. Tell you what: I guess I'll take stock.'

And he rose from table and disappeared with a lamp in the lazarette.

''Ere's another screw loose,' observed Huish.

'My man,' said Herrick, with a sudden gleam of animosity, 'it is still
your watch on deck, and surely your wheel also?'

'You come the 'eavy swell, don't you, ducky?' said Huish.

'Stand away from that binnacle. Surely your w'eel, my man. Yah.'

He lit a cigar ostentatiously, and strolled into the waist with his
hands in his pockets.

In a surprisingly short time, the captain reappeared; he did not look at
Herrick, but called Huish back and sat down.

'Well,' he began, 'I've taken stock--roughly.' He paused as if for
somebody to help him out; and none doing so, both gazing on him instead
with manifest anxiety, he yet more heavily resumed. 'Well, it won't
fight. We can't do it; that's the bed rock. I'm as sorry as what you can
be, and sorrier. We can't look near Samoa. I don't know as we could get
to Peru.'

'Wot-ju mean?' asked Huish brutally.

'I can't 'most tell myself,' replied the captain. 'I drew it fine; I
said I did; but what's been going on here gets me! Appears as if the
devil had been around. That cook must be the holiest kind of fraud. Only
twelve days, too! Seems like craziness. I'll own up square to one thing:
I seem to have figured too fine upon the flour. But the rest--my land!
I'll never understand it! There's been more waste on this twopenny
ship than what there is to an Atlantic Liner.' He stole a glance at his
companions; nothing good was to be gleaned from their dark faces; and he
had recourse to rage. 'You wait till I interview that cook!' he roared
and smote the table with his fist. 'I'll interview the son of a gun so's
he's never been spoken to before. I'll put a bead upon the--'

'You will not lay a finger on the man,' said Herrick. 'The fault is
yours and you know it. If you turn a savage loose in your store-room,
you know what to expect. I will not allow the man to be molested.'

It is hard to say how Davis might have taken this defiance; but he was
diverted to a fresh assailant.

'Well!' drawled Huish, 'you're a plummy captain, ain't you? You're a
blooming captain! Don't you, set up any of your chat to me, John Dyvis:
I know you now, you ain't any more use than a bloomin' dawl! Oh, you
"don't know", don't you? Oh, it "gets you", do it? Oh, I dessay! W'y,
we en't you 'owling for fresh tins every blessed day? 'Ow often 'ave I
'eard you send the 'ole bloomin' dinner off and tell the man to chuck it
in the swill tub? And breakfast? Oh, my crikey! breakfast for ten, and
you 'ollerin' for more! And now you "can't 'most tell"! Blow me, if it
ain't enough to make a man write an insultin' letter to Gawd! You dror
it mild, John Dyvis; don't 'andle me; I'm dyngerous.'

Davis sat like one bemused; it might even have been doubted if he heard,
but the voice of the clerk rang about the cabin like that of a cormorant
among the ledges of the cliff.

'That will do, Huish,' said Herrick.

'Oh, so you tyke his part, do you? you stuck-up sneerin' snob! Tyke it
then. Come on, the pair of you. But as for John Dyvis, let him look out!
He struck me the first night aboard, and I never took a blow yet but
wot I gave as good. Let him knuckle down on his marrow bones and beg my
pardon. That's my last word.'

'I stand by the Captain,' said Herrick. 'That makes us two to one, both
good men; and the crew will all follow me. I hope I shall die very soon;
but I have not the least objection to killing you before I go. I should
prefer it so; I should do it with no more remorse than winking. Take
care--take care, you little cad!'

The animosity with which these words were uttered was so marked in
itself, and so remarkable in the man who uttered them that Huish stared,
and even the humiliated Davis reared up his head and gazed at his
defender. As for Herrick, the successive agitations and disappointments
of the day had left him wholly reckless; he was conscious of a pleasant
glow, an agreeable excitement; his head seemed empty, his eyeballs
burned as he turned them, his throat was dry as a biscuit; the least
dangerous man by nature, except in so far as the weak are always
dangerous, at that moment he was ready to slay or to be slain with equal
unconcern.

Here at least was the gage thrown down, and battle offered; he who
should speak next would bring the matter to an issue there and then; all
knew it to be so and hung back; and for many seconds by the cabin clock,
the trio sat motionless and silent.

Then came an interruption, welcome as the flowers in May.

'Land ho!' sang out a voice on deck. 'Land a weatha bow!'

'Land!' cried Davis, springing to his feet. 'What's this? There ain't no
land here.'

And as men may run from the chamber of a murdered corpse, the three ran
forth out of the house and left their quarrel behind them, undecided.

The sky shaded down at the sea level to the white of opals; the sea
itself, insolently, inkily blue, drew all about them the uncompromising
wheel of the horizon. Search it as they pleased, not even the practisect
eye of Captain Davis could descry the smallest interruption. A few filmy
clouds were slowly melting overhead; and about the schooner, as around
the only point of interest, a tropic bird, white as a snowflake, hung,
and circled, and displayed, as it turned, the long vermilion feather of
its tall. Save the sea and the heaven, that was all.

'Who sang out land?' asked Davis. 'If there's any boy playing funny dog
with me, I'll teach him skylarking!'

But Uncle Ned contentedly pointed to a part of the horizon, where a
greenish, filmy iridescence could be discerned floating like smoke on
the pale heavens.

Davis applied his glass to it, and then looked at the Kanaka. 'Call that
land?' said he. 'Well, it's more than I do.'

'One time long ago,' said Uncle Ned, 'I see Anaa all-e-same that, four
five hours befo' we come up. Capena he say sun go down, sun go up again;
he say lagoon all-e-same milla.'

'All-e-same WHAT?' asked Davis.

'Milla, sah,' said Uncle Ned.

'Oh, ah! mirror,' said Davis. 'I see; reflection from the lagoon. Well,
you know, it is just possible, though it's strange I never heard of it.
Here, let's look at the chart.'

They went back to the cabin, and found the position of the schooner well
to windward of the archipelago in the midst of a white field of paper.

'There! you see for yourselves,' said Davis.

'And yet I don't know,' said Herrick, 'I somehow think there's something
in it. I'll tell you one thing too, captain; that's all right about the
reflection; I heard it in Papeete.'

'Fetch up that Findlay, then!' said Davis. 'I'll try it all ways. An
island wouldn't come amiss, the way we're fixed.'

The bulky volume was handed up to him, broken-backed as is the way with
Findlay; and he turned to the place and began to run over the text,
muttering to himself and turning over the pages with a wetted finger.

'Hullo!' he exclaimed. 'How's this?' And he read aloud. 'New Island.
According to M. Delille this island, which from private interests would
remain unknown, lies, it is said, in lat. 12 degrees 49' 10" S. long.
113 degrees 6' W. In addition to the position above given Commander
Matthews, H.M.S. Scorpion, states that an island exists in lat. 12
degrees 0' S. long. 13 degrees 16' W. This must be the same, if such
an island exists, which is very doubtful, and totally disbelieved in by
South Sea traders.'

'Golly!' said Huish.

'It's rather in the conditional mood,' said Herrick.

'It's anything you please,' cried Davis, 'only there it is! That's our
place, and don't you make any mistake.'

"'Which from private interests would remain unknown,"' read Herrick,
over his shoulder. 'What may that mean?'

'It should mean pearls,' said Davis. 'A pearling island the government
don't know about? That sounds like real estate. Or suppose it don't mean
anything. Suppose it's just an island; I guess we could fill up with
fish, and cocoanuts, and native stuff, and carry out the Samoa scheme
hand over fist. How long did he say it was before they raised Anaa? Five
hours, I think?'

'Four or five,' said Herrick.

Davis stepped to the door. 'What breeze had you that time you made Anaa,
Uncle Ned?' said he.

'Six or seven knots,' was the reply.

'Thirty or thirty-five miles,' said Davis. 'High time we were shortening
sail, then. If it is an island, we don't want to be butting our head
against it in the dark; and if it isn't an island, we can get through it
just as well by daylight. Ready about!' he roared.

And the schooner's head was laid for that elusive glimmer in the sky,
which began already to pale in lustre and diminish in size, as the stain
of breath vanishes from a window pane. At the same time she was reefed
close down.



Part II

THE QUARTETTE

Chapter 7. THE PEARL-FISHER

About four in the morning, as the captain and Herrick sat together on
the rail, there arose from the midst of the night in front of them the
voice of breakers. Each sprang to his feet and stared and listened. The
sound was continuous, like the passing of a train; no rise or fall
could be distinguished; minute by minute the ocean heaved with an equal
potency against the invisible isle; and as time passed, and Herrick
waited in vain for any vicissitude in the volume of that roaring, a
sense of the eternal weighed upon his mind. To the expert eye the isle
itself was to be inferred from a certain string of blots along the
starry heaven. And the schooner was laid to and anxiously observed till
daylight.

There was little or no morning bank. A brightening came in the east;
then a wash of some ineffable, faint, nameless hue between crimson and
silver; and then coals of fire. These glimmered a while on the sea line,
and seemed to brighten and darken and spread out, and still the night
and the stars reigned undisturbed; it was as though a spark should
catch and glow and creep along the foot of some heavy and almost
incombustible wall-hanging, and the room itself be scarce menaced. Yet
a little after, and the whole east glowed with gold and scarlet, and the
hollow of heaven was filled with the daylight.

The isle--the undiscovered, the scarce believed-in--now lay before them
and close aboard; and Herrick thought that never in his dreams had he
beheld anything more strange and delicate. The beach was excellently
white, the continuous barrier of trees inimitably green; the land
perhaps ten feet high, the trees thirty more. Every here and there, as
the schooner coasted northward, the wood was intermitted; and he could
see clear over the inconsiderable strip of land (as a man looks over a
wall) to the lagoon within--and clear over that again to where the far
side of the atoll prolonged its pencilling of trees against the morning
sky. He tortured himself to find analogies. The isle was like the rim
of a great vessel sunken in the waters; it was like the embankment of
an annular railway grown upon with wood: so slender it seemed amidst the
outrageous breakers, so frail and pretty, he would scarce have wondered
to see it sink and disappear without a sound, and the waves close
smoothly over its descent.

Meanwhile the captain was in the forecross-trees, glass in hand, his
eyes in every quarter, spying for an entrance, spying for signs of
tenancy. But the isle continued to unfold itself in joints, and to run
out in indeterminate capes, and still there was neither house nor
man, nor the smoke of fire. Here a multitude of sea-birds soared and
twinkled, and fished in the blue waters; and there, and for miles
together, the fringe of cocoa-palm and pandanus extended desolate, and
made desirable green bowers for nobody to visit, and the silence of
death was only broken by the throbbing of the sea.

The airs were very light, their speed was small; the heat intense. The
decks were scorching underfoot, the sun flamed overhead, brazen, out
of a brazen sky; the pitch bubbled in the seams, and the brains in the
brain-pan. And all the while the excitement of the three adventurers
glowed about their bones like a fever. They whispered, and nodded, and
pointed, and put mouth to ear, with a singular instinct of secrecy,
approaching that island underhand like eavesdroppers and thieves; and
even Davis from the cross-trees gave his orders mostly by gestures. The
hands shared in this mute strain, like dogs, without comprehending it;
and through the roar of so many miles of breakers, it was a silent ship
that approached an empty island.

At last they drew near to the break in that interminable gangway. A spur
of coral sand stood forth on the one hand; on the other a high and thick
tuft of trees cut off the view; between was the mouth of the huge laver.
Twice a day the ocean crowded in that narrow entrance and was heaped
between these frail walls; twice a day, with the return of the ebb, the
mighty surplusage of water must struggle to escape. The hour in which
the Farallone came there was the hour of flood. The sea turned (as
with the instinct of the homing pigeon) for the vast receptacle, swept
eddying through the gates, was transmuted, as it did so, into a wonder
of watery and silken hues, and brimmed into the inland sea beyond. The
schooner looked up close-hauled, and was caught and carried away by the
influx like a toy. She skimmed; she flew; a momentary shadow touched her
decks from the shore-side trees; the bottom of the channel showed up for
a moment and was in a moment gone; the next, she floated on the bosom of
the lagoon, and below, in the transparent chamber of waters, a myriad
of many-coloured fishes were sporting, a myriad pale-flowers of coral
diversified the floor.

Herrick stood transported. In the gratified lust of his eye, he forgot
the past and the present; forgot that he was menaced by a prison on the
one hand and starvation on the other; forgot that he was come to that
island, desperately foraging, clutching at expedients. A drove of
fishes, painted like the rainbow and billed like parrots, hovered up in
the shadow of the schooner, and passed clear of it, and glinted in the
submarine sun. They were beautiful, like birds, and their silent passage
impressed him like a strain of song.

Meanwhile, to the eye of Davis in the cross-trees, the lagoon continued
to expand its empty waters, and the long succession of the shore-side
trees to be paid out like fishing line off a reel. And still there was
no mark of habitation. The schooner, immediately on entering, had been
kept away to the nor'ard where the water seemed to be the most deep; and
she was now skimming past the tall grove of trees, which stood on that
side of the channel and denied further view. Of the whole of the low
shores of the island, only this bight remained to be revealed. And
suddenly the curtain was raised; they began to open out a haven, snugly
elbowed there, and beheld, with an astonishment beyond words, the roofs
of men.

The appearance, thus 'instantaneously disclosed' to those on the deck of
the Farallone, was not that of a city, rather of a substantial country
farm with its attendant hamlet: a long line of sheds and store-houses;
apart, upon the one side, a deep-verandah'ed dwelling-house; on the
other, perhaps a dozen native huts; a building with a belfry and some
rude offer at architectural features that might be thought to mark it
out for a chapel; on the beach in front some heavy boats drawn up, and
a pile of timber running forth into the burning shallows of the
lagoon. From a flagstaff at the pierhead, the red ensign of England was
displayed. Behind, about, and over, the same tall grove of palms,
which had masked the settlement in the beginning, prolonged its root
of tumultuous green fans, and turned and ruffled overhead, and sang its
silver song all day in the wind. The place had the indescribable but
unmistakable appearance of being in commission; yet there breathed from
it a sense of desertion that was almost poignant, no human figure was to
be observed going to and fro about the houses, and there was no sound of
human industry or enjoyment. Only, on the top of the beach and hard by
the flagstaff, a woman of exorbitant stature and as white as snow was to
be seen beckoning with uplifted arm. The second glance identified her
as a piece of naval sculpture, the figure-head of a ship that had long
hovered and plunged into so many running billows, and was now brought
ashore to be the ensign and presiding genius of that empty town.

The Farallone made a soldier's breeze of it; the wind, besides, was
stronger inside than without under the lee of the land; and the stolen
schooner opened out successive objects with the swiftness of a panorama,
so that the adventurers stood speechless. The flag spoke for itself; it
was no frayed and weathered trophy that had beaten itself to pieces on
the post, flying over desolation; and to make assurance stronger, there
was to be descried in the deep shade of the verandah, a glitter of
crystal and the fluttering of white napery. If the figure-head at the
pier end, with its perpetual gesture and its leprous whiteness, reigned
alone in that hamlet as it seemed to do, it would not have reigned long.
Men's hands had been busy, men's feet stirring there, within the circuit
of the clock. The Farallones were sure of it; their eyes dug in the deep
shadow of the palms for some one hiding; if intensity of looking might
have prevailed, they would have pierced the walls of houses; and there
came to them, in these pregnant seconds, a sense of being watched and
played with, and of a blow impending, that was hardly bearable.

The extreme point of palms they had just passed enclosed a creek, which
was thus hidden up to the last moment from the eyes of those on board;
and from this, a boat put suddenly and briskly out, and a voice hailed.

'Schooner ahoy!' it cried. 'Stand in for the pier! In two cables'
lengths you'll have twenty fathoms water and good holding ground.'

The boat was manned with a couple of brown oarsmen in scanty kilts of
blue. The speaker, who was steering, wore white clothes, the full dress
of the tropics; a wide hat shaded his face; but it could be seen that he
was of stalwart size, and his voice sounded like a gentleman's. So much
could be made out. It was plain, besides, that the Farallone had been
descried some time before at sea, and the inhabitants were prepared for
its reception.

Mechanically the orders were obeyed, and the ship berthed; and the three
adventurers gathered aft beside the house and waited, with galloping
pulses and a perfect vacancy of mind, the coming of the stranger who
might mean so much to them. They had no plan, no story prepared; there
was no time to make one; they were caught red-handed and must stand
their chance. Yet this anxiety was chequered with hope. The island being
undeclared, it was not possible the man could hold any office or be in a
position to demand their papers. And beyond that, if there was any truth
in Findlay, as it now seemed there should be, he was the representative
of the 'private reasons,' he must see their coming with a profound
disappointment; and perhaps (hope whispered) he would be willing and
able to purchase their silence.

The boat was by that time forging alongside, and they were able at last
to see what manner of man they had to do with. He was a huge fellow,
six feet four in height, and of a build proportionately strong, but
his sinews seemed to be dissolved in a listlessness that was more than
languor. It was only the eye that corrected this impression; an eye
of an unusual mingled brilliancy and softness, sombre as coal and
with lights that outshone the topaz; an eye of unimpaired health and
virility; an eye that bid you beware of the man's devastating anger.
A complexion, naturally dark, had been tanned in the island to a hue
hardly distinguishable from that of a Tahitian; only his manners and
movements, and the living force that dwelt in him, like fire in flint,
betrayed the European. He was dressed in white drill, exquisitely made;
his scarf and tie were of tender-coloured silks; on the thwart beside
him there leaned a Winchester rifle.

'Is the doctor on board?' he cried as he came up. 'Dr Symonds, I mean?
You never heard of him? Nor yet of the Trinity Hall? Ah!'

He did not look surprised, seemed rather to affect it in politeness;
but his eye rested on each of the three white men in succession with a
sudden weight of curiosity that was almost savage. 'Ah, THEN!' said he,
'there is some small mistake, no doubt, and I must ask you to what I am
indebted for this pleasure?'

He was by this time on the deck, but he had the art to be quite
unapproachable; the friendliest vulgarian, three parts drunk, would have
known better than take liberties; and not one of the adventurers so much
as offered to shake hands.

'Well,' said Davis, 'I suppose you may call it an accident. We had heard
of your island, and read that thing in the Directory about the PRIVATE
REASONS, you see; so when we saw the lagoon reflected in the sky, we put
her head for it at once, and so here we are.'

''Ope we don't intrude!' said Huish.

The stranger looked at Huish with an air of faint surprise, and looked
pointedly away again. It was hard to be more offensive in dumb show.

'It may suit me, your coming here,' he said. 'My own schooner is
overdue, and I may put something in your way in the meantime. Are you
open to a charter?'

'Well, I guess so,' said Davis; 'it depends.'

'My name is Attwater,' continued the stranger. 'You, I presume, are the
captain?'

'Yes, sir. I am the captain of this ship: Captain Brown,' was the reply.

'Well, see 'ere!' said Huish, 'better begin fair! 'E's skipper on deck
right enough, but not below. Below, we're all equal, all got a lay in
the adventure; when it comes to business, I'm as good as 'e; and what I
say is, let's go into the 'ouse and have a lush, and talk it over among
pals. We've some prime fizz,' he said, and winked.

The presence of the gentleman lighted up like a candle the vulgarity of
the clerk; and Herrick instinctively, as one shields himself from pain,
made haste to interrupt.

'My name is Hay,' said he, 'since introductions are going. We shall be
very glad if you will step inside.'

Attwater leaned to him swiftly. 'University man?' said he.

'Yes, Merton,' said Herrick, and the next moment blushed scarlet at his
indiscretion.

'I am of the other lot,' said Attwater: 'Trinity Hall, Cambridge. I
called my schooner after the old shop. Well! this is a queer place and
company for us to meet in, Mr Hay,' he pursued, with easy incivility to
the others. 'But do you bear out ... I beg this gentleman's pardon, I
really did not catch his name.'

'My name is 'Uish, sir,' returned the clerk, and blushed in turn.

'Ah!' said Attwater. And then turning again to Herrick, 'Do you bear out
Mr Whish's description of your vintage? or was it only the unaffected
poetry of his own nature bubbling up?'

Herrick was embarrassed; the silken brutality of their visitor made
him blush; that he should be accepted as an equal, and the others thus
pointedly ignored, pleased him in spite of himself, and then ran through
his veins in a recoil of anger.

'I don't know,' he said. 'It's only California; it's good enough, I
believe.'

Attwater seemed to make up his mind. 'Well then, I'll tell you what: you
three gentlemen come ashore this evening and bring a basket of wine with
you; I'll try and find the food,' he said. 'And by the by, here is a
question I should have asked you when I come on board: have you had
smallpox?'

'Personally, no,' said Herrick. 'But the schooner had it.'

'Deaths?' from Attwater.

'Two,' said Herrick.

'Well, it is a dreadful sickness,' said Attwater.

''Ad you any deaths?' asked Huish, ''ere on the island?'

'Twenty-nine,' said Attwater. 'Twenty-nine deaths and thirty-one cases,
out of thirty-three souls upon the island.--That's a strange way to
calculate, Mr Hay, is it not? Souls! I never say it but it startles me.'

'Oh, so that's why everything's deserted?' said Huish.

'That is why, Mr Whish,' said Attwater; 'that is why the house is empty
and the graveyard full.'

'Twenty-nine out of thirty-three!' exclaimed Herrick, 'Why, when it came
to burying--or did you bother burying?'

'Scarcely,' said Attwater; 'or there was one day at least when we gave
up. There were five of the dead that morning, and thirteen of the dying,
and no one able to go about except the sexton and myself. We held a
council of war, took the... empty bottles... into the lagoon, and buried
them.' He looked over his shoulder, back at the bright water. 'Well,
so you'll come to dinner, then? Shall we say half-past six. So good of
you!'

His voice, in uttering these conventional phrases, fell at once into
the false measure of society; and Herrick unconsciously followed the
example.

'I am sure we shall be very glad,' he said. 'At half-past six? Thank you
so very much.'

     '"For my voice has been tuned to the note of the gun

     That startles the deep when the combat's begun,"'

quoted Attwater, with a smile, which instantly gave way to an air
of funereal solemnity. 'I shall particularly expect Mr Whish,' he
continued. 'Mr Whish, I trust you understand the invitation?'

'I believe you, my boy!' replied the genial Huish.

'That is right then; and quite understood, is it not?' said Attwater.
'Mr Whish and Captain Brown at six-thirty without fault--and you, Hay,
at four sharp.'

And he called his boat.

During all this talk, a load of thought or anxiety had weighed upon the
captain. There was no part for which nature had so liberally endowed
him as that of the genial ship captain. But today he was silent and
abstracted. Those who knew him could see that he hearkened close to
every syllable, and seemed to ponder and try it in balances. It
would have been hard to say what look there was, cold, attentive, and
sinister, as of a man maturing plans, which still brooded over the
unconscious guest; it was here, it was there, it was nowhere; it was now
so little that Herrick chid himself for an idle fancy; and anon it was
so gross and palpable that you could say every hair on the man's head
talked mischief.

He woke up now, as with a start. 'You were talking of a charter,' said
he.

'Was I?' said Attwater. 'Well, let's talk of it no more at present.'

'Your own schooner is overdue, I understand?' continued the captain.

'You understand perfectly, Captain Brown,' said Attwater; 'thirty-three
days overdue at noon today.'

'She comes and goes, eh? plies between here and...?' hinted the captain.

'Exactly; every four months; three trips in the year,' said Attwater.

'You go in her, ever?' asked Davis.

'No, one stops here,' said Attwater, 'one has plenty to attend to.'

'Stop here, do you?' cried Davis. 'Say, how long?'

'How long, O Lord,' said Attwater with perfect, stern gravity. 'But it
does not seem so,' he added, with a smile.

'No, I dare say not,' said Davis. 'No, I suppose not. Not with all your
gods about you, and in as snug a berth as this. For it is a pretty snug
berth,' said he, with a sweeping look.

'The spot, as you are good enough to indicate, is not entirely
intolerable,' was the reply.

'Shell, I suppose?' said Davis.

'Yes, there was shell,' said Attwater.

'This is a considerable big beast of a lagoon, sir,' said the captain.
'Was there a--was the fishing--would you call the fishing anyways GOOD?'

'I don't know that I would call it anyways anything,' said Attwater, 'if
you put it to me direct.'

'There were pearls too?' said Davis.

'Pearls, too,' said Attwater.

'Well, I give out!' laughed Davis, and his laughter rang cracked like a
false piece. 'If you're not going to tell, you're not going to tell, and
there's an end to it.'

'There can be no reason why I should affect the least degree of secrecy
about my island,' returned Attwater; 'that came wholly to an end with
your arrival; and I am sure, at any rate, that gentlemen like you and Mr
Whish, I should have always been charmed to make perfectly at home. The
point on which we are now differing--if you can call it a difference--is
one of times and seasons. I have some information which you think I
might impart, and I think not. Well, we'll see tonight! By-by, Whish!'
He stepped into his boat and shoved off. 'All understood, then?' said
he. 'The captain and Mr Whish at six-thirty, and you, Hay, at four
precise. You understand that, Hay? Mind, I take no denial. If you're not
there by the time named, there will be no banquet; no song, no supper,
Mr Whish!'

White birds whisked in the air above, a shoal of parti-coloured fishes
in the scarce denser medium below; between, like Mahomet's coffin, the
boat drew away briskly on the surface, and its shadow followed it over
the glittering floor of the lagoon. Attwater looked steadily back
over his shoulders as he sat; he did not once remove his eyes from the
Farallone and the group on her quarter-deck beside the house, till
his boat ground upon the pier. Thence, with an agile pace, he hurried
ashore, and they saw his white clothes shining in the chequered dusk of
the grove until the house received him.

The captain, with a gesture and a speaking countenance, called the
adventurers into the cabin.

'Well,' he said to Herrick, when they were seated, 'there's one good job
at least. He's taken to you in earnest.'

'Why should that be a good job?' said Herrick.

'Oh, you'll see how it pans out presently,' returned Davis. 'You go
ashore and stand in with him, that's all! You'll get lots of pointers;
you can find out what he has, and what the charter is, and who's the
fourth man--for there's four of them, and we're only three.'

'And suppose I do, what next?' cried Herrick. 'Answer me that!'

'So I will, Robert Herrick,' said the captain. 'But first, let's see all
clear. I guess you know,' he said with an imperious solemnity, 'I guess
you know the bottom is out of this Farallone speculation? I guess you
know it's RIGHT out? and if this old island hadn't been turned up right
when it did, I guess you know where you and I and Huish would have
been?'

'Yes, I know that,' said Herrick. 'No matter who's to blame, I know it.
And what next?'

'No matter who's to blame, you know it, right enough,' said the captain,
'and I'm obliged to you for the reminder. Now here's this Attwater: what
do you think of him?'

'I do not know,' said Herrick. 'I am attracted and repelled. He was
insufferably rude to you.'

'And you, Huish?' said the captain.

Huish sat cleaning a favourite briar root; he scarce looked up from that
engrossing task. 'Don't ast me what I think of him!' he said. 'There's a
day comin', I pray Gawd, when I can tell it him myself.'

'Huish means the same as what I do,' said Davis. 'When that man came
stepping around, and saying "Look here, I'm Attwater"--and you knew it
was so, by God!--I sized him right straight up. Here's the real
article, I said, and I don't like it; here's the real, first-rate,
copper-bottomed aristocrat. 'AW' I DON'T KNOW YE, DO I? GOD DAMN YE, DID
GOD MAKE YE?' No, that couldn't be nothing but genuine; a man got to be
born to that, and notice! smart as champagne and hard as nails; no kind
of a fool; no, SIR! not a pound of him! Well, what's he here upon this
beastly island for? I said. HE'S not here collecting eggs. He's a palace
at home, and powdered flunkies; and if he don't stay there, you bet he
knows the reason why! Follow?'